February migrant arrests rise 32% from Biden’s first full month in office

Migrant arrests along the southwestern border with Mexico in February remained about the same as in January. The Biden administration is touting reduced apprehensions in January and February, but the numbers are still 32% higher than in February 2021 — President Joe Biden’s first full month in office.

Border Patrol agents in the nine southwestern border areas apprehended 128,877 migrants who crossed from Mexico to the United States between ports of entry in February. This is only 36 fewer migrants than the 128,913 apprehended in January. The Biden administration attributed the reduction in nearly 222,000 migrant arrests in December to the new CBP One mobile app.

“New border enforcement measures have kept February’s total encounter count roughly equal to January’s,” CBP Acting Commissioner Troy Miller said in a written statement. “We are also encouraged by the new functionality of the CBP One mobile app, which has made it easy and safe for migrants to schedule an appointment at a port of entry to request a humanitarian exception to the health order. title 42. The application eliminates smugglers and reduces the exploitation of migrants. CBP continues to make enhancements to the app to address feedback we received from stakeholders. »

What the commissioner did not say is that the February report would have been a record-breaking February were it not for the record set in 2022 when officers arrested 159,170 migrants.

He also did not indicate that the February arrest report represented a 32% increase from February 2021 — Biden’s first full month in office. February 2021 was also the last month that officers apprehended fewer than 100,000 migrants in a single month.

The administration also reported a significant increase in the arrest of unaccompanied minors who crossed the border or were sometimes abandoned along the border by smugglers. This number rose from 9,382 unaccompanied minors in January to 10,870 in February – and an increase of 16%.

“As of February, 22,755 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans (including immediate family members, if applicable) were paroled in-country by CBP’s Office of Field Operations as part of parole processes established for Venezuelans in October and extended to other nationalities in January. CBP officials reported. “The arrivals of non-citizens through these processes, which include careful verification and require a supporter present in the United States, demonstrate the benefit of these legal processes in promoting safe and orderly migration while reducing encounters along the southwestern border.”

Members of Congress never voted to approve or implement this new blanket parole program created in January by the Biden administration.

Figures reported in the February Southwest Land Border Encounters report released Wednesday afternoon by CBP officials do not include record arrests of migrants in the Swanton area along the Canadian border or in the areas of Miami. These two sectors recorded increases of 945 and 507% respectively.

The figures also do not include the approximately 51,000 known escapees – migrants who are believed to have crossed the border but were not apprehended by Border Patrol agents.